Crown of Thorns

“Why? Are you worried about him?”

“Evan, Evan…! Don’t do this, please don’t do this to me.”

I grabbed Evan’s arm and hung onto it desperately.

He still looked down at me with cold eyes. His eyes were neither warm nor friendly anymore. I was terrified of them. If you’re going to see me with such eyes, if you’re going to look at me like that, then it’d be better if you’d just kill me. Please end it all.

I took in a rough breath, grabbed the hem of his sleeve as if hanging onto the Grim Reaper’s cloak, then slowly lowered my head. Burying my face in his arm, I muttered.

“That’s right. As you may already know, I made all this happen. If killing other people was not enough, I also tried to kill you, too. So kill me. You’re better off killing me, Evan.”

After staying silent for a while, he grabbed me by the shoulders and started dragging me off somewhere. His powerful grip came out of nowhere, and his hands holding my shoulders lacked kindness. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Then he opened one of the doors which filled the long corridor and shoved me inside. He followed me and closed the door. Instead of pulling out his sword, he grabbed me by the neck and swallowed my lips.

After standing motionless; struck dumb at the unexpected situation, I hurried to push him away. As I pushed at his chest with my tied hands, he grabbed them firmly with one hand and held the back of my neck with the other even more forcefully, deepening the kiss further.

He swallowed my lips, ravaged my mouth, and pinched my tongue whenever it dodged his. It was a very urgent and primal kiss. I gradually felt the lack of air in my lungs. He crushed me mercilessly. Not allowing me any room for escape or protest, he was madly coveting something buried profoundly in the depths of me.

I tried to take a hurried breath or appeal to him by calling his name whenever his jaw moved, but he did not leave me much of a gap. Not knowing whether it was moaning or weeping, only the sound of my whimpering breaths leaked, agitating him more instead of appeasing him.

Having been blocking my mouth and tenaciously clinging to my lips for a long while, as if he was seeking something unknown in them, Evan slowly fell apart from me. I hurriedly tried to fill my empty lungs with fresh air until my head, which felt blank, started working again. The tears that I’ve been restraining fell like a waterfall. All the emotions I had suppressed all this while came descending on me all at once. Once they broke free, they burst out without a break, so I couldn’t swallow them back down.

“Hu, heung.”

It was painful. I was afraid. I couldn’t believe the current situation I was in. It was hard to believe that the person in front of me was Evan. Evan, as I’ve known him so far, wasn’t like this, and it felt like everything I had known was falling apart.

Evan wiped away my tears from a close enough distance for him to feel my breath and to kiss me again. Unlike before, he did it softly and sweetly. His movement was so light and delicate as when it was when he was comforting me before. His touch was but an illusion of delicate feathers passing near my cheek. It was like he was whispering, “I am the Evan that you know, don’t doubt that.” He was making me even more confused.

Quietly, he whispered, brushing his lips with mine.

“You want me to kill you?”

His voice, which was quieter than usual, contained a strange power, so it was clearly carried to my ears even in the midst of my weeping. His lips, touching mine, moved again.

“…Do you think I’ll let you go?”

He kissed me slowly and deeply. Soon after, his lips, as if regretful, hesitated on the edge of my chin and moved to my cheek slowly. He kissed my tears and licked his lips with a satisfying expression. His eyes were burning. They resembled the sun that was blazing with the eagerness to swallow the witch. Staring at the flames dancing in his eyes alone gave me a scorching feeling.

“I can finally have you. I worked so hard in order to make this day happen. How can you tell me to let you go just like that?”

“…Evan.”

I could barely open my mouth and call out his name. I tried to avoid his gaze and kept my eyes downcast. Trying not to let my shaken state show in my voice, I then said.

“The thing I had hoped for, the thing I wanted from you…!”

He claimed my lips again. As if he didn’t want to hear any more words come out from them. It was rough and urgent, although not as much as his first kiss. Without knowing, my arms tightened, but he fastened his hand to my wrists tightly and didn’t let go. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move. By the time my wrists started getting sore in his grip, and my squeezed rib cage was screaming for air, he separated himself from me. However, although he stopped kissing me, he still stood close enough for him to touch me again at any time.

He whispered with a cold expression and an even colder voice.

“Stop provoking me.”

There was no warmth. Not in the way he spoke nor in the way his hand swept down my neck. His eyes were dangerously narrowed. It was as if they could explode at any minute. When I silently tried to turn my head away, he applied strength to the hand that was stroking my neck, making me look back at him. One thing was clear; there was no way for me to get away from Evan. Unless he let go, I could not escape his arms.

Evan said in a low, eerie voice, akin to the cry of an animal.

“I thought you only stayed in the tower, but you seem to have been walking around and meeting a lot of people. I thought you would have only stayed in the tower when I went away, so I obediently listened to your wishes. I tried so hard because I thought that if I did as you wanted, you wouldn’t have to go and find someone else, right? I’ve already suffered a great wound because of you. I’ve almost collapsed once before from the shock. You kept threatening that if I didn’t follow my fate, then you wouldn’t need me to be by your side. I didn’t know you would be so good at lying. Wearing an indifferent look at that.”

A great feeling of hurt was revealed behind his burning eyes. I bit my lips and held a groan from escaping my mouth. I was only concerned that my plans were going to go wrong, so I couldn’t think of the betrayal, shock, and pain he would have felt. At this moment, he must be feeling more pain than I was. The feelings of the witch who was already prepared were not comparable to those of the warrior who had trusted and followed her since young.

And in his words, I couldn’t shake my feelings of embarrassment as I encountered a truth I had never thought of. Was he saying he was going to be a warrior not because the witch wanted it, or because he wanted it, but because he wanted me to stay put? Was it just to keep the witch by his side?

Far be it from my will, he whispered, wiping away another drop of my tears.

“It was difficult for me to endure it. It was agonizing for me to bite down the feeling of wanting to ruin everything.”

Evan’s face was showing signs of his suffering. His eyebrows were furrowed, and his hurt eyes shook visibly.

“Until that day, the day when I knew the truth, I still believed that you would be looking at me alone, but I have already reached the limit. I swallowed back the endless feelings of betrayal and sadness in order not to offend you. I had to lie on your lap with a smile, pretending to know nothing, in case you would avoid me if you found out that I knew the truth. And I had to hide my urge to brutally scold you while watching you lie until the end. Did you know that?”

My breath was caught in my throat. Because I thought I knew which day he was talking about. Even though he ran to the witch and showed off his betrayed and wounded heart, she thought there was nothing strange about him because he smiled naturally and hugged her. I thought he knew nothing, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

Did he actually know the whole truth? Did he hide the fact that he knew the truth despite having found out about my plan?

I felt like my heart was being torn apart. It hurt so much that I grabbed my chest with the arm that pushed him away. I couldn’t breathe properly, and my heart raced violently until a thumping sound rang out in my ears.

I couldn’t imagine what he would have thought as he looked at me, how he would have felt or what emotions would have seized him while laughing at me on the inside. No, I didn’t want to imagine. What was he thinking when he came to see me knowing that the witch he trusted with all his heart was trying to kill him? How could it have been possible for him to appear in front of me, pretending to be fine while hiding his shattered heart? The shattered pieces of his heart must have scratched, torn, and ate away at the rest of him.

Frustrated and utterly livid, he peeled my hand off my chest and wrapped it in his, as if my action of clasping my chest was driving him crazy. He said with an enticing glance as the previous coldness in his eyes vanished completely.

“But it’s okay. In return, I can have you like this. Rather, it gave me a chance. I’ve been following you, whom I had believed knew nothing, and I’ve been waiting for the day when we could be like this, for all the time that is to come. Waiting for the day when I could find out what the hell you wanted me to do and what your true goal was. I believed that if I played the role of a good warrior, just as you wished, then our relationship that began when I was young would not end. I earnestly hoped that it shouldn’t.”

“…Why? Why the hell would you go that far…?”

Evan laughed at my lingering question. It was definitely the same frowning smile he always wore in his childhood, but the feeling of it was clearly different. The smile, which felt both adorable and uneasy at first glance, slowly turned into a spider web that had trapped me and made it impossible for me to escape.

He looked with a satisfied expression at the prey that had already been tied up in his intricately woven spider web. Then, he slowly buried his face in my shoulder, muttering as he guided his lips to my exposed neck.

“The people don’t know of the precious treasure trapped in the tower.”

In his breath, I trembled at the unfamiliar tickling sensation that started from the neck and spread all throughout my whole body. Perhaps liking my reaction, he bit and nibbled at my throat for a long time. He slowly licked the bite marks he had left behind, then climbed up my neck again, brushing his lips over my skin all the way up to my ear, and whispered.

“I’m not going to give anyone the treasure that God gave me, the crown surrounded by thorns which God had failed to recognize.”

I faced him with a trembling gaze. Suddenly, he looked at my face, locking his eyes with mine, and said with a terrifyingly pretty smile.

“I’m the real winner here, not the new Emperor who will rule this country, not the Empress who will be able to dream of the future she wants by his side, and not the people who will be taken with the new era.”

As if enchanted, Evan plucked my quivering lips again. A satisfied smile lingered on his mouth. His laughter climbed up my neck and filled my heart. I stared at the smiling Evan, my body a shivering mess, and my head brindled with confusion.

The fairy tale of the witch who claimed Darkness for the sake of the Light is over.

However, the witch could not have a happy ending.

Because of the warrior who became the Light in order to have the Darkness…

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Author’s note : The fairy tale for the warrior has only just begun.

The final meaning of Crown of Thorns has now been revealed. The Crown surrounded by thorns, abandoned by God. It was referring to Nyx.